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What Questions Should a Prospective Employee Ask?
Mortimer.CA writes "Even though things aren't great in the economy, it's prudent to plan ahead to when things (hopefully) pick up. In light of that, I'd like to update a previously asked question in case things have changed over the last four years: What do you ask every new (prospective) employer? When you're sitting in the interview room after they've finished grilling you, there's usually an opportunity to reciprocate. There will be some niche questions for specializations (sys admin, programming, PM, QA, etc.), but there are some generic ones that come to mind, such as: what is the (official) dress code?"
Similarly, what questions should you avoid? Read on for the rest of Mortimer.CA's thoughts.
He continues with these suggestions:
"What about my resume caught your eye? What hardware/software am I expected to use at my desktop (e-mail, OS, editor, source control, etc.)? Are there team lunches or get-togethers? What are your goals for the next six months, one year, three years? What ticket/issue tracking system do you use? Do you have separate build/stage/QA/etc. environments? How do you keep track of documentation? What are your full names (so I can Google them)? What are the typical hours of the team members? Those are some of the ones I've thought of after some digging around. Are there the generic ones that you ask? What are some question for various niches? (e.g., for sysadmins: what config mgmt software do you use?)"
"What about my resume caught your eye? What hardware/software am I expected to use at my desktop (e-mail, OS, editor, source control, etc.)? Are there team lunches or get-togethers? What are your goals for the next six months, one year, three years? What ticket/issue tracking system do you use? Do you have separate build/stage/QA/etc. environments? How do you keep track of documentation? What are your full names (so I can Google them)? What are the typical hours of the team members? Those are some of the ones I've thought of after some digging around. Are there the generic ones that you ask? What are some question for various niches? (e.g., for sysadmins: what config mgmt software do you use?)"
Where do we eat?
If you want to know how much overtime you're going to work, and how family-friendly a workplace is, find out what the demographics of the company are. If you are single, you may find that an overly family-oriented workplace is going to put extra pressure on you to stay late due to parents needing to take time off to be with their family (doctor visits, holidays, etc). On the other hand, if you have a family, a family-friendly workplace may afford you more time to spend with your family.
Another good question is to ask your interviewer how many times a week he talks to customers. It will give you a good idea of how insulated you will be from customers, and that can give you an idea of whether you want the job or not. A non-customer centric position will probably be slower in promotion, but much lower pressure. A customer centric position will be higher pressure, but the opportunity for professional growth (even if all you want to be is a developer) is enormous.
No, that makes it sound like you already don't like the job you haven't even been offered yet. Instead, ask about career paths, ask where your co-workers came from (internal new-hires, transfers/promotions, etc.), and where former group members are now. Asking how often people get promoted makes you sound like a civil servant "wannabe", probably not your best interview tactic.
Ken
And a virtual "-1, bullshit" to counter my virtual +1 above.
I always ask about the "real working hours" for salaried jobs. Always, barring my very first job (games development, ho ho), which is why I do it now. It doesn't have to come across as lazy - you can spin it as wanting to make an informed decision about whether you're happy committing to the working culture.
If you don't get a job simply because you asked that question, then they were probably planning to work you like a galley slave anyway. Unless that was your goal - and it may be, I was that dumb going into my first job - then you just dodged the bullet.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"The goal of the interview is to get the offer"
It is not, unless you really want *any* job they could offer (flipping burgers included). If that's not the case, the goal of the interview is not to get the offer but to get the offer *if* it fits both parties. If you can naturally get the questions you are interested in rised during the interview, good, if not, directly question them shows professionality and that you are really interested on the job, not only the paycheck.
If asked like: "What is your education and training policy for employees?" and "Will additional education be reflected in job position, if my job performance is satisfying, or is promotion generally based on seniority?"
or something like that. And a critical one for me: "What is you policy on flexible hours" (or whatever you call in in the US - is it OK I get to work later (or earlier) and then leave later (or earlier)).
If you ask in the second situation, you are simply lazy and unwilling to be a "team player".
Maybe in crazy world. We all have to negotiate a salary, which is worth nothing if you don't know if you have to work five or fifty hours for it per month.
Absolutely true - this is a valid question to ask, after you have entered the salary negotiations phase and not before.
You want your question to demonstrate your ability to do the job as well as allow you to assess your future bosses and coworkers. So technical questions like "What version control system do you use?" or "What kind of backup system would I be expected to maintain?" are good for talking to technically-oriented managers. For non-technical managers, some good questions might be "How does my work get tested before getting sent out to the users?" and "How are project schedules determined, and what approaches are typically used to keep projects on schedule?".
I am officially gone from
If you ask in the second situation, you are simply lazy and unwilling to be a "team player".
That seems very strange to me. I have asked about the length of the typical work week at every interview I have ever had. And my lifetime average is about .50 (I get a job offer from about half of my interviews). And I am not a contractor...I have interviewed for salaried positions only.
It is all in the presentation; and how you present yourself will be a function of how you view yourself, the employer, and your potential relationship. If you expect that every employer wants to exploit you and that by asking this you will automatically be sending him a red flag that you cannot be exploited, and therefore that you will not get the job.....or if you see yourself as being basically powerless and the interview is your chance to beg for a job from someone who doesn't really need you but could be convinced to hire you anyway (but only if you are willing to work all the time).....then you have screwed yourself from the get-go.
Remember, employers need employees too, and the successful ones are (quite often) the ones who have managed to retain and motivate talent. Such employers understand the need for work/life balance, and don't want to drive their talent to burn-out (having that happen a few times gets expensive, fast). You are not a selfish bastard for wanting a salary that fits the position's value in the market, your talent level, and the workload. Nor are you a lazy bastard for wanting to have a life outside of work. If you think that asking about salary/workload makes you appear as such, then you need to adjust your self-image. If you think all employers see you this way, then you need to adjust your world-view.
There are some asshole employers, of course. They will try to convince you that there are no jobs available in which you can get away with working less than 60 hours a week, and it goes up from there at crunch time. Also, "salaried" means "you work two jobs, both for me, and only get paid for one, and you like it that way." If the questions you ask reveal that the potential employer is one of these, move on.
The simple fact is....it makes no sense to enter into a relationship if you don't know what the expectations are. Asking what the workload is, and how much it pays, is a simply getting the basic facts. The only concern is timing...if you ask these questions right away it makes you look like a job-hopper, which makes you a risky investment. If you wait till the second interview to ask, it makes it look like you decided that you like the company itself, and are serious about wanting to work there, and are getting the necessary facts. Just do it with the proper professional attitude and any employer worth working for will respond in kind.
Yeah euphemistic questions FTW.
I like: "What's the staff turnover rate like? How about in the dept I'd be joining?"
If the staff turnover is high, it's often not a good sign. Poor management or hiring practices, and often you'd be picking up the pieces. This doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't join them, but if the turnover is high, the package better be better - haggle if necessary - esp if they know that now you know their environment "isn't better than industry average" based on the employee turnover rate.
In fact, the Bank Regulator in my country considers high staff turnover a significant negative when doing audits of banks.
I've conducted dozens of programmer interviews, and I totally disagree. The point of the interview is not to get a job, it's to allow both parties a chance to see if this pairing will work. If I can tell that a prospective employee is just concerned with getting hired, that's a huge red flag. I want to hire someone passionate about the same things that my team is passionate about, someone who will have a good sense of humor when we're both still there at 2 AM, and, of course, someone who has the skills required.
The vast majority of candidates, when they get to the "Do you have any questions for us?" bit, just clam up. "Uh, no, not really." Oh? You're about to commit 40+ hours a week to working for me, and you can't think of anything you'd like to get reassurance on before that happens? I think of this part of the interview as a critical thinking test. You're about to be thrown into a new project; what are the important questions to ask?
Sticking to the job is fine; there are a lot of questions that are good to ask there, but I view going outside the job, to questions about fit, demographics, team structure and interaction, etc as a sign of experience. You've got a lot less to worry about from the guy who asks if his cynical style will be a problem than from the guy who doesn't. Questions about fit show me that you know what it takes to make you happy, which is great. We can check to see if our culture matches, if not, no hard feelings. I work in video games, so the attitude might be a bit different; every company says you should be excited about your work, but most people here actually are, and if you're not it's often a problem. The more people like that we can weed out, the better.
As an interviewer, I love the questions the interviewee asks. As parent poster implies, they tell you a lot about what the candidate thinks is important. Questions that focus solely on job function, ignoring job environment, show someone inexperienced or uninterested. If the questions show that the candidate is trying to find a good fit, a place where he can be himself and excel, that's the guy that gets the thumbs up.
Pull a stunt like that and you'd strike out if I was interviewing you. To each their own, but fer christ sakes it is an email client not your main development tool!
Once you start asking religious questions like the ones in your post, you start to look like a person who will be very difficult to work with. After all, if you have major demands for extremely minor things like your email client, what kinds of demands are you going to asking for when it comes to actually doing your job?
Exactly. Employment is a two-way relationship. You wouldn't expect an employer to go out of their way to hire you (and only you) without even reading your CV. Why would any rational employer expect a skilled worker to seek them out and want to work for them (and only them) without knowing anything about what they were getting in return?
Another good one is when a potential employer is really keen to know your previous salary. How could that possibly be relevant to your new job, if you're being judged on merit and they're willing to make an honest offer based on what they think having you in that role will be worth to them? If they ask about what kind of money/package you're looking for, that's fair enough, but it's a different question. Otherwise, they're just trying to force you to give a number first (which is how you lose any negotiation) and pin you with lying at interview otherwise.
Sometimes, saying something to the effect that your current employer asks everyone to keep those details confidential but it's around the market rate will get you off the hook, and if they challenge it, you can ask if they'd really want to recruit someone who would later betray their own confidential information. If they still won't take the hint at that point, personally, I'm thinking about ending the interview. Of course, if you're not willing to walk away from a bad deal, you're going to lose any negotiation anyway, so you might as well just tell them what they want to know.
Employers whose job offers you shouldn't be sad to lose:
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
DO NOT ask about benefits in the interview, ESPECIALLY in the first interview.
Your mission in the "interview" process is to sell yourself, NOT to negotiate (or even understand) the terms of an offer. Separate the interview process from the negotiation process.
Asking about benefits is comparable to a car sales person asking the prospective buyer about his capability to afford the car. (In other words, you would only do it as a "qualifying question", if you seriously doubted the company's capability to meet your requirements.) Good car sales people get you wanting the car, and sell features of the car before talking details of the offer. Once you want the car, as a potential buyer, you have overcome a major hurdle - it's *this* car over any other, provided we can come to terms. Then they start working the terms.
No, don't talk benefits or pay. Instead, sell yourself, and then once you have them wanting you (instead of hundreds of your competitors), find out the details of the offer. Then feel free to negotiate better terms.
The only 2 exceptions I can think of are if you want to qualify the company, or if you have VERY unusual requirements for benefits. For instance, if you have a dying out-of-town parent, you may want to touch on the vacation issue. This is something that most everyone can be empathetic to, and if you approach it in a way that is honest and human, and shows that you are willing to *give* in order to *get* what you want (like "I have a personal situation with a dying parent and so I'd like to work 50 hour weeks, so that I can take a few extra days off in the first two months. What's the company's flexibility to such short-term arrangements?" ...even that should be a "late in the interviewing process"-type question.
Maybe a better way to phrase it would be "Through the current financial crisis, what has been the biggest struggle for your company-- bringing in new work, project cycle delays, accounts receivable, cash flow, or credit concerns?" You can follow that up with "How do you see that changing over the next year?"
Instead of asking how often people are promoted, I ask what percentage of their management comes from people promoted within the company. I think it mitigates the idea that you're just using a position as a stepping stone while still getting you the answer you want.
Plus, I think it's important to know that there's a good possibility that your manager was at one point capable of doing the job you're applying for. Honestly, knowing my potential manager doesn't have unrealistic expectations is a lot more important to me than hypotheticals about whether I'm getting his job when he moves up or on.
If I'm set up for failure, I'm not going to get his job either way. Effective schmoozers might, but I'm not one of them.
-- It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
You suggest that your government telling you that you may not contract with an employer for a job for less than three weeks vacation, no matter how much you'd like to do so, makes you more free.
We suggest that when you are told that you aren't allowed to do something that is otherwise legitimate, you have less choice/less options and are thus less free.
Which would be fine, if negotiations were between parties of equal power.
However, the employment market in many industries is close to an oligopsony. Consequently, prospective employers have far more say in contract writing than prospective employees, there is little effective competition between employers to drive working conditions to a reasonable level, and the negotiating power isn't equal.
One of the valuable roles a government can play in maintaining a healthy society is that it can act as an equaliser in such circumstances. If you're going to allow the creation of artificial legal entities (corporations/shareholders) that disrupt the natural financial system (you work, you get paid; you don't pay, no-one works for you) then there has to be a flip side so that individual citizens don't get screwed as a result.
It's just like monopoly abuse/anticompetitive behaviour, but the other way around: while I'm generally not a fan of excessive regulation of businesses, I also recognise that the natural end result of an unbalanced system will be very bad for most people, so I don't mind the balancing provisions.
You may counter that the companies have all the power in the relationship, so you need the government to have the power and protect you instead. Generally, when the government and companies get together, it's not the employees and customers that win as a result. As long as there are plenty of competitors (the government hasn't set up one company as a monopoly nor over-regulated things to prevent competitors from joining the market), you are better off negotiating with several companies that can use your skills, because they have to compete for your labor.
That's a lovely theory that is nothing like practice, for the reasons above.
You are also entitled to start your own company if you think you can do it better.
I did, thanks, and I'm working fewer hours, for more money, and (here's the telling one) making better products with more satisfied clients.
But the amount of paperwork and admin required to do so, not because it's necessary for the job but because it's necessary to deal with all the government-imposed bureaucracy, is staggering. If you're going to argue that there should be more small, independent companies to keep the system honest and the real workers getting the real rewards, I'll be the first to agree with you, but changes would be needed to allow that on a significantly wider scale than today as well.
Do you mentally make any connection between being forced to give 3 weeks vacation minimum (increasing the cost of employees to employers) and a high unemployment rate among the less skilled? Economists do.
Erm... Right. Or we could just compare the notoriously bad working conditions in countries like the US and Japan with the conditions in places like Europe, Scandanavia, Australia and New Zealand. It's a shame I can't post the little chart I just built from a couple of Wikipedia tables showing unemployment rate and statutory minimum holidays by country, but if you're in any doubt, you might like to try the same exercise.
Granted, this is looking at total unemployment and not just the rate among the less skilled, which is what you mentioned. Even so, with such huge variations in total unemployment levels with the same (higher) level of statutory minimum paid time off, I struggle to believe that increasing that statutory minimum would be economically damaging on any level.
As an alternative theory, I suggest to you that people work better when properly rested an
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I once interviewed for a non-profit who asked what my salary requirements were and I said "about $70->$90k" and he immediately shot back "unfortunately we are budgeted for around $55k". With that, we both knew this wasn't gonna work so we didn't bother wasting more time.
That is an excellent example of a successful first interview, and one that a job hunter should be prepared for. A good follow-up would be
"Okay, then, I see we don't have a match on this position, but we do have a few minutes remaining for this interview. Are you aware of any positions that are available either with your institution or through your associations with colleagues in other institutions that match my resume and salary requirements?" That is, be prepared for the interview to terminate early because of an obvious bad fit, and be ready to try to turn it into a networking opportunity. The best outcome would be the interviewer saying that "You might try the Foo Foundation. John Smith-- a fellow in their HR Dept-- and I collaborated on designing this job announcement and a similar one that Foo is about publish. You can use my name in your cover letter and ask John to give me a call. If you give me permission to do so, I can tell him that we interviewed you and might have hired you if we had a larger budget to work with."
The chances of this kind of thing happening are pretty small. But they are zero-- nothing, nada, zip-- if you aren't prepared to shift a dead-ended interview into a networking opportunity.
Will